Labour will have a new focus on "bread & butter issues" like cost of living, Hipkins said when he replaced Ardern as PM. Let's take him at his word and look at how, literally, the cost of bread has been changing. The figure below shows "bread & cereals" have increased the most ever since Hipkins' became PM in January 2023 (compared to any other time over the past decade since statisticians began compiling this time series). Its an earth-shattering double digit rise in both of the first two quarters of 2023. The "bread and butter" PM has made bread and butter unaffordable.
Hipkins also likes people referring to him by his nickname, "Chippy", which conjures up ordinary folks buying potato chips & fries in The Hutt where he was brought up. So how has the price of potatoes fared? Gosh, they're up nearly 70% since Labour took office. Looks like Chippy has made chips unaffordable as well.
Truth is, "Chippy", the "bread and butter" PM, doesn't know how to reduce the cost of bread and butter and chips, or pretty much anything, for that matter. Redistributing wealth from one bank account to another, which is how he says he is making things more "affordable" to those with less, doesn't actually change the cost of anything.
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